


Morph

by absolutelyCancerous (cal1brations)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, hints of Cloud/Aerith if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 23:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cal1brations/pseuds/absolutelyCancerous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, (a time hardly <i>anyone</i> remembers) there was a cadet and a SOLDIER.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morph

He’s used to routine. The structure. The order. The nothing-else-but.

He doesn’t get to pick when he gets up, when he eats and when he sleeps. It’s planned out for him. It’s an easy existence. As long as one can manage to do what they’re told to. March when they’re told to. Speak when they’re told to.

Kill what they’re told to.

Not ask questions.

Cloud is good at marching along. He’s good at the ABC-step, the 1-and-2-and. He can carry a gun and forget he’s got a name, when he’s with the thousands of others that are good at what he’s good at. They’re one in the same, when they’re in uniform. No one is an individual.

Cloud is good at falling in.

He gets sent on a mission. Somewhere bleak, somewhere that’s nowhere. Modeoheim. He’s never head of the place. The other infantrymen ordered on the mission haven’t, either. They don’t know anything outside the city, haven’t worked a day in their life.

Cloud knows he’s better.

They wake up on-routine. They suit up, they slap their helmet on. They become “cadet” and not “hey, you!”

They march up to the helicopter. It’s cold, but it’s not see-your-breath cold. Not anything like going-to-be-blinded-by-the-snow cold. Two things Cloud knows from home. Two things his fellow cadets have never experienced.

Inside the body of the metal beast, with propellers and lights and thousands of buttons and dials, they sit. It’s warm. No one complains.

They sit.

“We’re waiting on Lieutenant Fair.”

Yes, sir.

Past eight, it’s eight-oh-seven when they can hear the footsteps. Bootsteps. Bootslaps. The scream of rubber on concrete.

Cloud watches this Lieutenant Fair climb into the helicopter. He smiles like there’s nothing else his face would rather do, it’s the only thing he’s really capable of. Cloud has never seen a smile like that. Hasn’t ever smiled like that, assured. There’s a Turk behind him. He doesn’t seem amused with Lieutenant Fair.

“Twenty minutes late,” the Turk says. His voice is calm, cool. His eyes tell a different story.

Cloud chooses to believe the voice. Fretting before liftoff is not a good idea. Has never been a good idea.

“No one was  _mad_.”

He sits down next to Cloud. Parks himself directly beside him. If it isn’t for the instantaneous size difference that gives him away, it’s the eyes. Blue as the sky. Unnatural.

It’s also in the black uniform. SOLDIER trademark belt, the pauldrons, the boots.

Cloud doesn’t notice he’s staring until Lieutenant Fair laughs.

“You guys act like you’ve never been on a mission before!”

There is silence. The Lieutenant moves uncomfortably, like he’s sitting on seat of rusty nails.

Cloud thinks he’s in good company. He deserves this, being on a mission with First Class Lt. Fair. He’s better than any of his cohorts. He always has been.

Such does not keep him from being shy. Whenever Fair asks him something, he sits up a little straighter before giving an answer. He doesn’t want to look foolish. He doesn’t want to be anything but accepted.

Mentored, maybe.

.-._.-._.-.

Cloud learns that his name is not only Lieutenant Fair, but that he indeed has a first name, which is Zack. Cloud learns that Zack is only eighteen—three years older than himself, though—and that he comes from another dull-as-dishwater town. Somewhere called Gongaga, a place that leaves Zack with an accent Cloud has never heard before. Also with a tan Cloud has never seen before, and a personality Cloud has never dealt with before.

 He learns Zack doesn’t live by routine, but by the  _moment_. By ear. Goes with the flow.

Cloud knows that type of thinking is the kind that can get you killed.

He learns that Zack never liked cadet-life. He never liked the one-two marches and the firing of guns. He says SOLDIER is better, not in only the sense of fame, but the sense of high-class freedom that comes along with it.

He learns Zack wears size twelve boots and often breaks the zipper that hides up the lacings. He learns Zack doesn’t use gel to get his hair into the mess that it is more often than not. Cloud also learns Zack likes his coffee black as soot, food to a certain type of extreme, and that Mako boosters leave the fighter dizzy, (Not enough to make him cool his jets) with bad depth perception and metallic-tasting spit.

Cloud also learns Zack can change. Like leather boots that get left out too long in wet weather. Like the ugly caterpillars that hide away until they’re beautiful enough to be seen once again.

 One day, it’s a mission. The next, Zack looks different. Talks different. Walks different.

 He looks  _respectable_ , with no more innocence in his features. Hair slicked back, no more bangs to shape a childish face that is no longer, pronounced scar on his jaw. A stance that isn’t that of a cocky boy, not anymore. A brow that isn’t of the excitable farm boy, but of a weathered warrior.

Cloud learns it is very much too easy to fall in love with SOLDIER.

(And maybe falls a little in love with Zack, too.)

.-._.-._.-.

Cloud memorizes how Zack’s boots sound. In rain, snow, and shine. How he walks with an air no one can duplicate. How each step is sure to come after the next, like clear skies after the storm. Not to a beat, not to a one-two or an A-B, but so definite nonetheless.

Cloud memorizes Zack’s smiles, every one. He usually smiles when he talks, polite and kind. He doesn’t  _want_  to scare people, like civilians who will tremble in fear when they see the eyes. (Or, more importantly, the  _sword_.) A smile is all he can offer, a distraction from his destructive career. He has grins and smirks, sneers and wide-mouth simpers. The important part is that Cloud watches each and every single one reach his eyes, change his entire face.

Cloud wishes he knew how to smile like that.

Cloud memorizes how Zack talks. His accent isn’t thick, but it’s there, and it’s strangely homey. Like honey in tea. Like a basin of hot water to soak your hands and feet in after trekking through the snow. When Cloud gets carsick, he remembers that voice. Clear as day, soothing as peppermint to a sore stomach—it makes him relax and a little less ready to hurl out the window.

Cloud’s head becomes full of this knowledge, from how Zack’s worn leather gloves feel gripping his own, to how Zack laces up his boots and buckles his belt. It’s a little bit for astonishment, a lot for personal pleasure, and much more for Cloud’s obsession.

With SOLDIER.

(With Zack, too.)

Cloud has never found anyone who’s better than him. Never considered anyone was worthy of it. Certainly no one from back home.  _Definitely_  none of his fellow cadets.

That is, until Zack.

It might be love. It might be admiration. A wish for a fairy tale Cloud is all too sure he needs to dive into, to become a part of. ASAP.

He’s clutching at straws, drinking water in a mirage, making wishes on already-passed stars. Cloud thinks he deserves so much, because he hasn’t been given it under any other circumstance. A chance to make SOLDIER, a chance to impress Zack.

Cloud knows he’s mingling with associates in his tier, when he gets involved with ShinRa. With SOLDIER.

(With Zack, too.)

.-._.-._.-.

Cloud forgets.

Cloud forgets Zack’s voice, months upon months of that soothing, Gongaga-tinted voice. Syllables that split the air like a knife to warmed butter. Words of distress, of excitement and glory. Words of hope, of desire, and of desperation.

Cloud forgets his shallow steps. Forgets the strong arms that helped keep him upright, helped move him forward and help him drag dead, stupid legs as far as they had to go, as far as Zack could take him to some sort, however poor, of safety. Escape. He forgets the feeling of being there, but not really. Feeling every step, but also feeling like there was never ground beneath him to begin with.

Cloud forgets the feeling of being clogged with Mako. He doesn’t remember whining and moaning and mumbling, asking for help that his drug-hostage lips could not relay. That which his Mako-poisoned head couldn’t unscramble enough to make understandable to his only companion. He does not remember feeling his blood pump throughout his veins, thick with drugs and unimaginable power, with dreams he’d wanted ever since he was fourteen years old.

So long ago, that was. So, so long ago.

Cloud forgets. Forgets, forgets.

Cloud  _remembers_. He tells the story. He meets a girl. He falls in love. His life becomes everything  _but_  routine, because he is an Ex-SOLDIER; he’s used to being the star, the important one, the head-honcho. He is a hero and a friend and everything that’s right, all at the correct time. He’s brave and strong, he’s Mako-enhanced and he fights against the company that drowns the entire planet in sickness.

He is everything, and all at once, he is nothing.

Cloud remembers, then. (Correctly.)

Cloud remembers that he is not an Ex-SOLDIER. Remembers that he never made it into the program at all, that the most he was ever entrusted with was a gun, a helmet—

A sword.

The title of “living legacy”. To carry on two lives at once, and make each worth living.

Cloud remembers gasped-out words. A swan song, a final wish to a dear friend. Cloud remembers his head, still dizzy and out-of-sorts, being pressed down to wet skin—not from the rain. He remembers sitting on his knees in the sopping mud, much-too-red blood making his hair stick to his cheek, making his uniform stick to his chest.

Like a hint of Zack still holding him, still protecting him.

Cloud does not fail him the second time around.

He gives the sword a proper resting place, for his friend whom had none. Amongst flowers and pews, like the altar to a new church of its own.

Cloud believes. Believes he can live up to the title bestowed upon him, the one in pouring rain, just louder than the sound of Death dragging his slow, burdened feet.

He smiles once more. 


End file.
